The Federal Government and World Bank teams on Adolescent Girls Initiative for Learning and Empowerment (AGILE) have applauded Governor Ab­dulRahman AbdulRazaq for his administration's reforms and commitments in improving learning outcomes for children in the state.

AGILE is a World Bank-assist­ed Project of the Federal Govern­ment. Kwara has qualified to be enrolled into the programme that seeks better girl-child education, especially in senior secondary school.

“Your Excellency, we know the story of Kwara State. We have seen the performance of Kwara State in education quality assurance. You have been a pace setter. Also, in the monitoring of learning achievements of perfor­mance of learners when it comes to basic education and post-basic education, you are doing so well,” National Project Coordinator of AGILE project in the Federal Ministry of Education, Hajia Aminah Haruna, said during a visit to Government House Ilorin on Tuesday.

“We have gone round and we have seen some schools and the possibility of intervening. We have seen commitments. We know you are coming from a long journey. But you have shown signs of strong commitments. We really appreciate that.

World Bank's Senior Edu­cation Specialist in Nigeria, Tunde Adekola, on his part, said the team was in Kwara for its appraisal mission as the state is eligible for the AGILE Project among the 11 additional states.

“Our coming here is to tell you that Kwara State is now eligible for the AGILE Project. We are happy about this, and we call it an appraisal mission. It is after appraisal mission that we will do negotiations. This is very im­portant to us because we have the original AGILE Project in seven states and out of the 11 states that we are extending the project to, it is only six states that are ready now and Kwara is one of them,” he said, adding that the adminis­tration has really done well for the education sector.

“We hope that by September, this project should be able to take off and start implementation in terms of resources we are bring­ing to the state because you have contributed N150m to support the project.”